Prof. Dr. Alexander Peukert

In Germany, there has been neither a single judgment, nor a judicial opinion on artistic citation that could be clearly applied to the film industry. In 2002, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court, in an opinion that has come to be known as the "Germania 3 Judgment", reviewed and strengthened the application of artistic (non-journalistic) citation within literary text. In cinema, however, this “right to quote” remains a much greyer area. To what extent can this landmark judgment, which dealt with Heiner Müller’s artistic montage technique, also be transferred to the film industry, or to emerging techniques such as mash-ups and supercuts? And what role can be played by “free use”, as it is set out in Article 24 of German copyright law (which allows for individual artistic works to “freely use” other works so long as they do not include recognizable musical melodies)?

Prof. Alexander Peukert, co-founder of the “The Formation of Normative Orders” Cluster of Excellence at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, will point out how underestimated the barriers of copyright regulations in Germany actually are.